The Druid of Shannara

Chapter Six

Pe Ell carried the daughter of the King of the Silver River to the home of the Dwarves who had offered to keep her, a family that consisted of a man, his wife, their widowed daughter, and two small grandchildren. Their home was a stone cottage at the east end of the village sheltered by white oak and red elm and set back against the wall of the forest close by the channel of the river. It was quiet there, isolated from the village proper, and by the time they reached it most of the following crowd had turned back. A handful chose to stay and set up camp at the edge of the property, most of them those who had followed the girl up from the country south, zealots who were determined that she would be their savior.

But she wasn’t for them, Pe Ell knew. She belonged now to him.

With the help of the family he placed the girl in a bed in a tiny back room where the man and woman slept. The husband and his wife and widowed daughter went out again to prepare something to eat for those who had chosen to keep vigil over the girl, but Pe Ell remained. He sat in a chair next to the bed and watched her sleep. For a time the children remained, curious to see what would happen, but eventually they lost interest, and he was left alone. The daylight faded into darkness and still he sat, waiting patiently for her to wake. He studied the line of her body as she lay sleeping, the curve of her hip and shoulder, the soft rounding of her back. She was such a tiny thing, just a little bit of flesh and bone beneath the coverings, the smallest spark of life. He marveled at the texture of her skin, at the coloring, at the absence of flaws. She might have been molded by some great artist whose reflection and skill had created a once-and-only masterpiece.

Fires were lit without, and the sound of voices drifted in through the curtained window. The sounds of night filled the silence between exchanges, the songs of birds and the buzzing of insects rising up against the faint rush of the river’s waters. Pe Ell was not tired and had no need to sleep.

Instead he used the time to think.

A week earlier he had been summoned to Southwatch and a meeting with Rimmer Dall. He had gone because it pleased him and not because it was necessary. He was bored and he was hopeful that the First Seeker would give him something interesting to do, that he would provide him with a challenge. To Pe Ell’s way of thinking, that was all that mattered about Rimmer Dall. The rest of what the First Seeker did with his life and the lives of others was of no interest to him. He had no illusions, of course. He knew what Rimmer Dall was. He simply didn’t care.

It took him two days to make the journey. He traveled north on horseback out of the rugged hill country below the Battlemound where he made his home and arrived at Southwatch at sunset on the second day. He dismounted while still out of sight of the sentries and made his approach by foot. He need not have bothered; he could have come all the way in and gained immediate admittance. But he liked the idea of being able to come and go as he chose. He liked demonstrating his talent.

Especially to the Shadowen.

Pe Ell was as they were as he came into the black monolith, seemingly through the creases in the stone, a wraith out of darkness. He went past the sentries unseen and unheard, as invisible to them as the air they breathed. Southwatch was silent and dark, its walls polished and smooth, its corridors empty. It had the feel and look of a well-preserved crypt. Only the dead belonged here, or those who trafficked in death. He worked his way through its catacombs, feeling the pulse of the magic imprisoned in the earth beneath, hearing the whisper of it as it sought to break free. A sleeping giant that Rimmer Dall and his Shadowen thought they would tame, Pe Ell knew. They kept their secret well, but there was no secret that could be kept from him.

When he was almost to the high tower where Rimmer Dall waited, he killed one of those who kept watch, a Shadowen, but it made no difference. He did so because he could and because he felt like it. He melted into the black stone wall and waited until the creature came past him, drawn by a faint noise that he had caused, then drew the Stiehl from its sheath within his pants and cut the life out of his victim with a single, soundless twist. The sentry died in his arms, its shade rising up before him like black smoke, the body crumbling into ash. Pe Ell watched the astonished eyes go flat. He left the empty uniform where it could be found.

He smiled as he floated through the shadows. He had been killing for a long time now and he was very good at it He had discovered his talent early in life, his ability to seek out and destroy even the most guarded of victims, his sense of how their protection could be broken down. Death frightened most people, but not Pe Ell. Pe Ell was drawn to it. Death was the twin brother of life and the more interesting of the two. It was secretive, unknown, mysterious. It was inevitable and forever when it came. It was a dark, infinitely chambered fortress waiting to be explored. Most entered only once and then only because they had no choice. Pe Ell wanted to enter at every opportunity and the chance to do so was offered through those he killed. Each time he watched someone die he would discover another room, glimpse another part of the secret. He would be reborn.

High within the tower, he encountered a pair of sentries posted before a locked door. They failed to see him as he eased close. Pe Ell listened. He could hear nothing, but he could sense that someone was imprisoned within the room beyond. He debated momentarily whether he should discover who it was. But that would mean asking, which he would never do, or killing the sentries, which he did not care to do. He passed on.

Pe Ell ascended a darkened flight of stairs to the apex of South watch and entered a room of irregular chambers that connected together like corridors in a maze. There were no doors, only entryways. There were no sentries. Pe Ell slipped inside, a soundless bit of night. It was dark without now, the blackness complete as clouds blanketed the skies and turned the world beneath opaque. Pe Ell moved through several of the chambers, listening, waiting.

Then abruptly he stopped, straightened, and turned.

Rimmer Dall stepped out of the blackness of which he was a part. Pe Ell smiled. Rimmer Dall was good at making himself invisible, too.

“How many did you kill?” the First Seeker asked in his hushed, whispery voice.

“One,” Pe Ell said. His smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Perhaps I will kill another on the way out.”

Dall’s eyes shone a peculiar red. “One day you will play this game too often. One day you will brush up against death by mistake and she will snatch you up instead of your victim.”

Pe Ell shrugged. His own dying did not trouble him. He knew it would come. When it did, it would be a familiar face, one he had seen all his life. For most, there was the past, the present, and the future. Not for Pe Ell. The past was nothing more than memories, and memories were stale reminders of what had been lost. The future was a vague promise—dreams and puffs of smoke. He had no use for either. Only the present mattered, because the present was the here and now of what you were, the happening of life, the immediacy of death, and it could be controlled as neither past nor future could. Pe Ell believed in control. The present was an ever-evolving chain of moments that living and dying forged, and you were always there to see it come.

A window opened on the night across a table and two chairs, and Pe Ell moved to seat himself. Rimmer Dall joined him. They sat in silence for a time, each looking at the other, but seeing something more. They had known each other for more than twenty years. Their meeting had been an accident. Rimmer Dall was a junior member of a policing committee of the Coalition Council, already deeply enmeshed in the poisonous politics of the Federation. He was ruthless and determined, barely out of boyhood, and already someone to be feared. He was a Shadowen, of course, but few knew it. Pe Ell, almost the same age, was an assassin with more than twenty kills behind him. They had met in the sleeping quarters of a man Rimmer Dall had come to dispatch, a man whose position in the Southland government he coveted and whose interference he had tolerated long enough. Pe Ell had gotten there first, sent by another of the man’s enemies. They had faced each other in silence across the man’s lifeless body, the night’s shadows cloaking them both in the same blackness that mirrored their lives, and they had sensed a kinship. Both had use of the magic. Neither was what he seemed. Both were relentlessly amoral. Neither was afraid of the other. Without, the Southland city of Wayford buzzed and clanked and hissed with the intrigues of men whose ambitions were as great as their own but whose abilities were far less. They looked into each other’s eyes and saw the possibilities.

They formed an irrevocable partnership. Pe Ell became the weapon. Rimmer Dall the hand that wielded it. Each served the other at his own pleasure; there were no constraints, no bonds. Each took what was needed and gave back what was required—yet neither really identified with nor understood what the other was about. Rimmer Dall was the Shadowen leader whose plans were an inviolate secret. Pe Ell was the killer whose occupation remained his peculiar passion. Rimmer Dall invited Pe Ell to eliminate those he believed particularly dangerous. Pe Ell accepted the invitation when the challenge was sufficiently intriguing. They nourished themselves comfortably on the deaths of others.

“Who is it that you keep imprisoned in the room below?” Pe Ell asked suddenly, breaking the silence, ending the flow of recollections.

Rimmer Dall’s head inclined slightly, a mask of bones that gave his face the look of a fleshless skull. “A Southlander, a Valeman. One of two brothers named Ohmsford. The other brother believes he has killed this one. I arranged for him to think so. I planned it that way.” The big man seemed pleased with himself. “When it is time, I will let them find each other again.”

“A game of your own, it seems.”

“A game with very high stakes, stakes that involve magic of unimaginable proportions—magic greater than either yours or mine or anyone else’s. Unbounded power.”

Pe Ell did not respond. He felt the weight of the Stiehl against his thigh, the warmth of its magic. It was difficult for him to imagine a magic more powerful—impossible to envision one more useful. The Stiehl was the perfect weapon, a blade that could cut through anything. Nothing could withstand it. Iron, stone, the most impenetrable of defenses—all were useless against it. No one was safe. Even the Shadowen were vulnerable; even they could be destroyed. He had discovered as much some years back when one had tried to kill him, sneaking into his bedchamber like a stalking cat. It had thought to catch him sleeping; but Pe Ell was always awake. He had killed the black thing easily.

Afterward it had occurred to him that the Shadowen might have been sent by Rimmer Dall to test him. He hadn’t chosen to dwell on the possibility. It didn’t matter. The Stiehl made him invincible.

Fate had given him the weapons he believed. He did not know who had made the Stiehl, but it had been intended for him. He was twelve years old when he found it, traveling with a man who claimed to be his uncle—a harsh, embittered drunkard with a penchant for beating anything smaller and weaker than himself—on a journey north through the Battlemound to yet another in an endless succession of towns and villages they frequented so that the uncle might sell his stolen goods. They were camped in a ravine in a desolate, empty stretch of scrub country at the edge of the Black Oaks, fence-sitting between the Sirens and the forest wolves, and the uncle had beaten him again for some imagined wrong and fallen asleep with his bottle tucked close. Pe Ell didn’t mind the beatings anymore; he had been receiving them since he was orphaned at four and his uncle had taken him in. He hardly remembered what it was like not to be abused. What he minded was the way his uncle went about it these days—as if each beating was being undertaken to discover the limits of what the boy could stand. Pe Ell was beginning to suspect he had reached those limits.

He went off into the failing light to be alone, winding down the empty ravines, trudging over the desolate rises, scuffing his booted feet, and waiting for the pain of his cuts and bruises to ease. The hollow was close, no more than several hundred yards away, and the cave at its bottom drew him as a magnet might iron. He sensed its presence in a way he could not explain, even afterward. Hidden by the scrub, half-buried in loose rock, it was a dark and ominous maw opening down into the earth. Pe Ell entered without hesitation. Few things frightened him even then. His eyesight had always been extraordinary, and even the faintest light was enough to let him find his way.

He followed the cave back to where the bones were gathered—human bones, centuries old, scattered about randomly as if kicked apart. The Stiehl lay among them, the blade gleaming silver in the dark, pulsing with life, its name carved on its handle. Pe Ell picked it up and felt its warmth. A talisman from another age, a weapon of great power—he knew at once that it was magic and that nothing could withstand it.

He did not hesitate. He departed the cave, returned to the camp, and cut his uncle’s throat. He woke the man first to make certain that he knew who had done it. His uncle was the first man he killed.

It had all happened a long time ago.

“There is a girl,” Rimmer Dall said suddenly and paused.

Pe Ell’s gaze shifted back to the other’s raw-boned face, silhouetted against the night. He could see the crimson eyes glitter.

The First Seeker’s breath hissed from between his lips. “They say that she possesses magic, that she can change the character of the land simply by touching it, and that she can dispatch blight and disease and cause flowers to spring full grown from the foulest soil. They say that she is the daughter of the King of the Silver River.”

Pe Ell smiled. “Is she?”

Rimmer Dall nodded. “Yes. She is who and what the stories claim. I do not know what she has been sent to do. She travels east toward Culhaven and the Dwarves. It appears that she has something specific in mind. I want you to find out what it is and then kill her.”

Pe Ell stretched comfortably, his response unhurried. “Kill her yourself, why don’t you?”

Rimmer Dall shook his head. “No. The daughter of the King of the Silver River is anathema to us. Besides, she would recognize a Shadowen instantly. Faerie creatures share a kinship that prohibits disguise. It must be someone other than one of us, someone who can get close enough, someone she will not suspect.”

“Someone.” Pe Ell’s crooked smile tightened. “There are lots of someones, Rimmer. Send another. You have entire armies of blindly loyal cutthroats who will be more than happy to dispatch a girl foolish enough to reveal that she possesses magic. This business doesn’t interest me.”

“Are you certain, Pe Ell?”

Pe Ell sighed wearily. Now the bargaining begins, he thought. He stood up, his lean frame whiplike as he bent across the table so that he could see clearly the other’s face. “I have listened to you tell me often enough how like the Shadowen you perceive me to be. We are much the same, you tell me. We wield magic against which there is no defense. We possess insight into the purpose of life which others lack. We share common instincts and skills. We smell, taste, sound, and feel the same. We are two sides of one coin. You go on and on! Well then, Rimmer Dall, unless you are lying I would be discovered by this girl as quickly as you, wouldn’t I? Therefore, there is no point in sending me.”

“It must be you.”

“Must it, now?”

“Your magic is not innate. It is separate and apart from who and what you are. Even if the girl senses it, she will still not know who you are. She will not be warned of the danger you pose to her. You will be able to do what is needed.”

Pe Ell shrugged. “As I said, this business doesn’t interest me.”

“Because you think there is no challenge in it?”

Pe Ell paused, then slowly sat down again. “Yes. Because there is no challenge.”

Rimmer Dall leaned back in his chair and his face disappeared into shadow. “This girl is no simple flesh-and-blood creature; she will not be easily overcome. She has great magic, and her magic will protect her. It will take stronger magic still to kill her. Ordinary men with ordinary weapons haven’t a chance. My legions of cutthroats, as you so disdainfully describe them, are worthless. Federation soldiers can get close to her, but cannot harm her. Shadowen cannot even get close. Even if they could, I am not certain it would make any difference. Do you understand me, Pe Ell?”

Pe Ell did not respond. He closed his eyes. He could feel Rimmer Dall watching him.

“This girl is dangerous, Pe Ell, the more so because she has obviously been sent to accomplish something of importance and I do not know what that something is. I have to find out and I have to put a stop to it. It will not be easy to do either. It may be too much even for you.”

Pe Ell cocked his head thoughtfully. “Is that what you think?”

“Possibly.”

Pe Ell was out of his chair with the swiftness of thought, the Stiehl snatched from its sheath and in his hand. The tip of the blade swept upward and stopped not an inch from Rimmer Dall’s nose. Pe Ell’s smile was frightening. “Really?”

Rimmer Dall did not flinch, did not even blink. “Do as I ask, Pe Ell. Go to Culhaven. Meet this girl. Find out what she plans to do. Then kill her.”

Pe Ell was wondering if he should kill Rimmer Dall. He had thought about it before, contemplated it quite seriously. Lately the idea had begun to take on a certain fascination for him. He felt no loyalty to the man, cared nothing for him one way or the other beyond a vague appreciation of the opportunities he offered and even those were no longer as rewarding as they had once been. He was tired of the other’s constant attempts to manipulate him. He no longer felt comfortable with their arrangement. Why not put an end to him?

The Stiehl wavered. The trouble was, of course, that there was no real point to it. Killing Rimmer Dall accomplished nothing, unless, of course, he was ready to discover what secrets might reveal themselves at the moment of the First Seeker’s dying. That could prove interesting. On the other hand, why rush things? It was better to savor the prospect for a time. It was better to wait.

He sheathed the Stiehl with a quicksilver movement and backed away from Rimmer Dall. For just an instant he had a sense of missed opportunity, as if such a chance might never come again. But that was foolish. Rimmer Dall could not keep him away. The First Seeker’s life was his to take when he chose.

He looked at Rimmer Dall for a moment, then spread his hands agreeably. “I’ll do it.”

He wheeled and started away. Rimmer Dall called after him. “Be warned, Pe Ell. This girl is more than a match for you. Do not play games with her. Once you have discovered her purpose, kill her quickly.”

Pe Ell did not respond. He slipped from the room and melted back into the shadows of the keep, uninterested in anything Rimmer Dall thought or wished. It was enough that he had agreed to do what the Shadowen had asked. How he accomplished it was his own business.

He departed Southwatch for Culhaven. He did not kill any of the sentries on his way out. He decided it wasn’t worth the effort.

Midnight approached. He grew tired of thinking and dozed in his chair as the hours slipped away. It was only several hours from dawn when the girl awoke. The cottage was silent, the Dwarf family asleep. The fires of those camped without had burned to coals and ash, and the last whispers of conversation had died away. Pe Ell came awake instantly as the girl stirred. Her eyes blinked open and fixed on him. She stared at him without speaking for a very long time and then slowly sat up.

“I am called Quickening,” she said.

“I am Pe Ell,” he replied.

She reached for his hand and took it in her own. Her fingers were as light as feathers as they traced his skin. Then she shivered and drew back.

“I am the daughter of the King of the Silver River,” she said. She swung her legs off the bed and faced him. She smoothed back her tangled silver hair. Pe Ell was transfixed by her beauty, but she seemed completely unaware of it. “I need your help,” she said. “I have come out of the Gardens of my father and into the world of men in search of a talisman. Will you journey with me to find it?”

The plea was so unexpected that for a moment Pe Ell did not respond but simply continued staring at the girl. “Why do you choose me?” he asked finally, confused.

And she said at once, “Because you are special.”

It was exactly the right answer, and Pe Ell was astonished that she should know enough to give it, that she could sense what he wanted to hear. Then he remembered Rimmer Dall’s warning and hardened himself. “What sort of talisman is it that we search for?”

She kept her eyes fastened on him. “One of magic, one with power enough to withstand even that of the Shadowen.”

Pe Ell blinked. Quickening was so beautiful, but her beauty was a mask that distracted and confused. He felt suddenly stripped of his defenses, bared to his deepest corners, the light thrown on all his secrets. She knew him for what he was, he sensed. She could see everything.

In that instant, he almost killed her. What stopped him was how truly vulnerable she was. Despite her magic, formidable indeed, magic that could transform a barren, empty stretch of hillside back into what was surely no more than a memory in the minds of even the most elderly of the Dwarves, she lacked any form of defense against a killing weapon like the Stiehl. He could sense that it was so. She was helpless should he choose to kill her.

Knowing that, he decided not to. Not yet.

“Shadowen,” he echoed softly.

“Are you frightened of them?” she asked him.

“No.”

“Of magic?”

Pe Ell breathed in slowly. His narrow features twisted in upon themselves as he bent toward her. “What do you know of me?” he asked, his eyes searching her own.

She did not look away. “I know that I need you. That you will not be afraid to do what is necessary.”

It seemed to Pe Ell that her words held more than one meaning, but he was unable to decide.

“Will you come?” she asked again.

Kill her quickly, Rimmer Dall had said. Find out her purpose and kill her. Pe Ell looked away, staring out the cottage window into the night, listening to the rushing sound of the river and the wind, soft and distant. He had never much bothered with the advice of others. Most of it was self-serving, useless to a man whose life depended on his ability to exercise his own judgment. Besides, there was a great deal more to this business than what Rimmer Dall had revealed. There were secrets waiting to be discovered. It might be that the talisman the girl searched for was something that even the First Seeker feared. Pe Ell smiled. What if the talisman happened to fall into his hands? Wouldn’t that be interesting?

He looked back at her again. He could kill her anytime.

“I will come with you,” he said.

She stood suddenly, reaching out her hands to take his own, drawing him up with her. They might have been lovers. “There are two more that must come with us, two like yourself who are needed,” she said. “One of them is here in Culhaven. I want you to bring him to me.”

Pe Ell frowned. He had already resolved to separate her from those fools camped without, misguided believers in miracles and fate who would only get in his way.

Quickening belonged to him alone. He shook his head. “No.”

She stepped close, her coal black eyes strangely empty. “Without them, we cannot succeed. Without them, the talisman is beyond our reach. No others need come, but they must.”

She spoke with such determination that he found it impossible to argue with her. She seemed convinced that what she was saying was true. Perhaps it was, he decided; she knew more of what she was about at this point than he.

“Just two?” he asked. “No others? None of those without?”

She nodded wordlessly.

“AH right,” he agreed. No two men would be enough to cause him problems, to interfere with his plans. The girl would still be his to kill when he chose. “One man is here in the village, you say. Where am I to find him?”

For the first time since she had come awake, she turned away so that he could not see her.

“In the Federation prisons,” she said.